The Evening Post discovers the Bristol Traffic Photo Portfolio

We don't do much coverage of the Evening Post these days, primarily because we've given up reading it. Eventually you get tired of its whiningly repetitive stance against resident parking and 20 mph zones, portraying them as a war on motorists, the death of the cities, a tax on Bristolians, etc. etc. The one thing we never saw was anything praising how the yellow lines have made paveparking and "optimistic corner parking" illegal —and how this was making inner Bristol a nicer place to walk.

Because the bits of the city with RPZ markings have had their pavements restored, and are now easier to walk round with a pushchair those areas still saying "RPZ isn't needed here", such as, say, St Andrews, where the contrast between that and adjacent Montpelier is now significant.

But no, no coverage of that in Evening Post articles, something we criticised it for in the past in a post looking at the history of pavements, parking and "walking opportunities" along Richmond Road, notable for nowhere to walk but the road and being an awful road to drive up or down: cars almost touching on both sides, nowhere to pass an oncoming cyclist, let alone oncoming car. With the RPZ rollout it became not only better to walk and cycle, it became driveable.

From the sole printed press news source in the city: silence.

It's interesting to discover then, that the paper has now moved on from "20 mph will kill our city" to "pavement parking is epidemic" and "is pavement parking getting worse?" The latter is quite amusing as we've been covering this issue for coming on a decade, and the main reason we cut back on coverage was that the RPZ reduced it so much that life was boring. It was not "epidemic", it is "endemic": so widespread and ongoing it barely merits a mention.

The BEP hasn't picked up on that, instead it's filled the paper with various photos of what to us look like everyday parking scenes in the bits of the city that aren't RP-Zoned. If you find it shocking, you need to go for a walk. Anyway, they had the pics up, no doubt shocking those people who don't walk further than the car they've parked on the pavement outside their home. For us, all too familiar. Very much all too familiar. In fact, one which was so familiar we recognised it as one of our own photos




This photo originally appeard in a post denouncing the car S589JDG for being parked on the specific bit of pavement where Richmond Road narrows —and in doing so, stopping cars and vans getting down the hill. That was the reason it had earned a note criticising its parking: not for paveparking, but for paveparking in a way inconsiderate of other drivers.

That photo was published in 2013, republished in an article 2015, where we used it as one of the "before/after" articles on the RPZ changes, an article which explicitly called out the BEP for its failure to cover the benefits of RPZs for pedestrians.

The photo the Evening Post printed was taken from an article criticising the Evening Post's coverage of pavement parking and RPZs.

Amusing as it is, it is still a copyright infringement.

We have a non-normative policy towards reuse of our images and videos.

The Bristolian: unlimited rights, no permission needed.

Everyone else: ask first

1. If the requester is one of: Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph, tell them to fuck off.
2. If the requester is any other press org, we'd check with the original submitter, probably give approval with credit due us and that original submitter. (if the original author refused, that'd be passed back too)
3. Videos: Link/embed them without any restrictions (obviously), but no to use in some video remake unless its more than just some branding exercise. And again, the Daily Mail can fuck off.

Now what about publication without getting permission?

1. If it was timely news, again, no problem.
2. If it was some photo from the archives, well that's a different matter. Any failure to check there has to be be a due diligence failure or a wilful disregard of our property.

The last time this happened, we extracted a donation to the Bristol Cycling Campaign. Someone had clearly just googled for an image "car parked on zebra crossing", and copied the photo without bothering to question image licensing T&Cs.

What about now?

We see two ways forward without resorting to the legal system, DMCA copyright takedowns, etc.

Option One: a modest donation —say £250— to the Bristol Cycling Campaign. 

Easy all round, it'd make upfor publish an article denouncing cyclists for cycling over a shared use bridge designed for walking and cycling on. We'd get some good coverage of the fact that the BEP was now supporting cycling campaigners in the city.

Option two: an in depth review how the RPZ makes walking in Bristol better.

We to collaborate on an article looking at richmond road's pavement parking over time, where the van-passing incident was nearly one of the bad examples. Here we could not only provide photos from our archives, we could approach the Montpelier resident forced to walk her kids home from school down the middle of the road. She could not only cover the experience of a parent in the "before" period, but her experience now that the RPZ has been rolled out. Maybe she could even talk about the impact of the RPZ on driving round the area.

Seems a reasonable choice to us. Fund the cycling campaign after a week of denouncing cyclists for going on a bridge built for them, or get an opportunity to work on a fascinating article looking at how a inner city parental school dropoff experience has been transformed for the better by the RPZ rollout.

Personally, we'd like the article —it would be a good follow up to the previous ones, and we don't want the author of those articles to feel chastised for writing the first articles we've ever seen to criticise paveparking. We'd even help with the content.

Over to you, Team Evening Post

RPZ comes to Monty: Oh the Inhumanity!

• First they came to Kingsdown, and everyone celebrated.
• Then they came to Cotham, and nobody complained
• Then they came to Redland, and the main complaints were from people just outside the zone.
• They they came to St Pauls, and people were upset about the cost, rather than the parking
• Then they came to Clifton and the shopkeepers who wanted to drive to work were more focused on their convenience than the revenue gains on having customer parking, they paid for tanks to make their point, still lost —and now have signs up everywhere saying "30 minute parking is free, please come and shop despite all the horror stories we put out"

And now: Monty

It's fascinating to see how the Evening Post has finally managed finda an agenda they can get people even in the inner city to care about. Up till now, what the BEP wrote about was irrelevant. Like who cares about congestion in Westbury on Trym or what's happening in Stapleton.

No more. Instead they've managed to stir up horror stories and build a whole agenda which everyone wanting to be elected as a mayor is using as their core election theme.

It's almost as if the paper has found a way to stay relevant in an era of free news over the internet.


Well, unlike the Evening Post we've spent time in Montpelier and have a dataset going back years. On a road-by-road basis, such as Richmond Road.

This is what it used to look like




A road where the pavement was exclusively used for parking, yet still so tight that only the bold drove down it.

If you were, say, trying to walk your kids to school, you'd be in the same roadway, keeping a tight rein on your four year old in case they ran ahead and ended up under an oncoming van or a car pulling out from their parking space on that pavement.


It was essentially a "shared space"

Yet look now? Someone has painted double yellow lines up one entire side of it! You can now drive up this road without fearing for your paintwork!



Incredibly, you don't have to commit to that journey hoping you wont meet anyone coming the other way —as if that did happen, one of you would be reversing up a road so tight that you had to get it spot on or hear a scraping sound.

1. It is now possible to drive up and down Richmond road safely.
2. It is now possible to walk up richmond road on the pavement, and even send a small child to run ahead of you without worrying about it being run over.
3. It is now trivial to for a car and a bicycle to pass.

That is what the RPZ has brought to Montpelier: not just white lines, not just yellow lines —but pavements people can use.

Anyone who says "its destroying Montpelier" clearly has a vision of the area where nobody walked, where scenes of two drivers out their car shouting at each other as to who was going to reverse were viewed as quaint traditions.

And what does the Evening Post do? Rather than highlight how it has now become safer to walk or cycle, how it has become more convenient to drive through, they've pointed to the yellow paint that someone has thrown onto the ticket machine at (00:48). That's the machine on the pavement which was never visible before.

And while the BEP condemn the vandalism, they don' t really, they are proud to report it —and blame the mayor for making the protesters do it.

So for all this "evening post represents the people" fuss they are really fighting to preserve a time when pavements were for parking and children couldn't walk round Montpelier safely.

Why should we, the residents of the inner city care? We are just being mislead by a paper that is happy to manufacture controversy, and happy to find it in the lives of people who are unable to adapt to change. Tough.

At this point the RPZ-haters will be going "So where did the cars go, eh?" The answer there is: the council added extra parking spaces round the corner by marking St Andrews Road for echelon parking.

In this photo you can just about make out a car coming up behind the parked van blocking the view. Which highlights the issue with echelon parking: its got a higher collision rate, and is particularly bad for cyclists.

In order to make the RPZ rollout less controversial, the council chose to make cycling on St Andrews Road more hazardous.

That's something for the haters to consider.

A Community RPZ? In Montpelier? As if.

In Montpelier today, Jon "ex-cllr" rogers is having some meetings proposing some community RPZ as opposed to an official one.

What does that mean ? Self enforced? Warning notes? Or something relying on guilt like the blinking 20 mph lights near schools?

It's not going to work -and if you want proof, take a trip round Montpelier

This is Richmond Road, one of the tightest streets in the area to drive along. Everybody walks in the pavement, because the pavement is the only way to fit two lanes worth of cars in.

Here we can see whether or not community-note-in-windscreen RPZs wil work.

Take this car, S589JDG. Purple note in its windscreen.

Anone thinking this note is complaining about a car on the pavement isn't from Montpelier.
 
It says

THIS IS A BAD PLACE TO PARK - SOME CARS CAN'T GET BY - & YOUR CAR RISKS BEING PRANGED

 While one of our reporters was taking the photo, a van had to get by, something that took about 5 minutes of some of the most careful driving you can do in a van, windows down, driver looking out, the Bristol Traffic consultant assisting.

It only worked because van mirrors are a different height to car ones -they managed to clear each other with 3-5 cm of gap, going through at crawling speed. The driver of this van deserves a lot of credit for how carefully they did this -though it did take about five minutes

If there had been contact, this wouldn't have been a wingmirror taxation -this would have been a bodywork tax. Which would have raised some interesting issues on responsibility.
 
If that had happened, the owner of S589JDG would have not seen any photographs from Bristol Traffic on the event -they'd have been destroyed.

Someone will no doubt comment and say "this is a one off", but our dataset says not: car parking in Montpelier makes it impossible to get any vehicle bigger than a van through without severe damage happening. We've also seen near fights developing in St Andrews Road -the wider road parallel to this one- over who reverses so as to let the oncoming traffic past a road narrowed by both-side parking.

We've stated before that it is business traffic where the cost of being held up can have a real cost attached to the time wasted. Commuting, school runs, shopping trips -fixable by setting off earlier. They aren't working hours and the cost is purely subjective.

Working in the city? Different. Delays increase journey times, reduce the number of journeys you can do a day, and place a limit on revenue.

This is why the Kingsdown RPZ has made driving through it easier. There's no need for anyone to write warning notes in purple ink to anyone inconsiderate enough to park so far out on the pavement that they block passing cars, there will be someone full time putting yellow stickers on the cars that hold up vehicles. These are a lot harder to ignore than purple notes, they stand out "pour encourager les autres".

Anyone who thinks a "community RPZ" is going to work is living in a world of unrealistic idealism -and missing the point that an RPZ would not only help residents get about their lives, it would help the business of the city work.

A roll out of RPZs around the inner city would make it a better city for business driving. No commuter-caused congestion; delivery options -and less roads blocked by overparking.

Richmond road is going to be the front line for a Montpelier RPZ -as it is clear that you can't paint parking bays on both sides of the road -and even if the council opens up the paveparking to make it official, there's still not enough room to get vehicles through.

The only viable outcome would be for one side to become no parking. Which would be controversial -and explain why some people are claiming that purple notepaper put in windscreens would work. A community with some wheel clamps and a tow truck might have more effect.

Discussions with the BSM and other Bristol Driving Schools

We always have a special place in our coverage for driving schools, as they have to teach beginners the hard art of driving and parking in a city which, excluding Clifton, is anti-car.

Here, up in Filton. Evolution WM10YHO show that the way to park is up on the pavement.

In front of it, a shared space. This eliminates the pavement entirely, and makes for some fun high-speed chicanes.

Speaking of driving schools, our ongoing discussion with one has had a new comment. The instructor does provide some good insight into what it's like driving a bus in the city, so those commenters slagging off FirstBus drivers should really save their anger for FirstBus management.

He also raises the issue of which laws should be ignored first:

I completely agree with people should not park on double yellow lines or zig zags or to close to junction corners all of which cause a danger to other road users but I do not count parking 2 wheels on the pavement in a very narror street that was never meant for parked cars in the first place as the same level of offence.

We don't bother with making decisions about which action is more defensible than others. We ignore them all, hence save time thinking about which action is more right than others.

We also note that we haven't seen that particular driving school in our database. The driving school that most pops is the British School of Motoring. The BSM may have more market share, but they are to be commended for something else: they are the only driving school that we have documented teaching people how to park in Montpelier. The other schools, they pick you up, then take you somewhere safe to learn to drive. The BSM actually hold their lessons in Montpelier.

In-town, in Richmond Road, Montpelier, we have a heartwarming sight. No, not the cyclist going up the hill with the Sainsbury's bag on the handlebars -it's the BSM instruction car WV60WJF.

We don't think driving and parking in Monty has its own test yet, so we're assuming it's a lesson. As Richmond Road is one of the hardest to drive and park on, we congratulate the BSM for showing their pupils the way forward -or at least the way up on the pavement without damaging your wheels, hitting the wall or paying the wingmirror tax on the way up the road.

So far, nobody from the BSM has got in touch with us. However, we are pleased to have video coverage of a discussion between some under-employed tax-dodger and the BSM car WR60CUY, which can be seen driving into the ASL on the red light: the bicycle doesn't get their green light until Shaldon Road is on red, so the car has had five seconds of red before it comes to a halt.

When queried about what the driver thinks the penalty for driving into an ASL is, the driving instructor comes back with the correct answer: anyone who cares about such things doesn't have a life. We actually think this summarises the entire country's cycling activist groups: they only do it because they don't have real lives.

Congratulations to the BSM for putting this tax dodger in their place!

Bicycles on the A38, vans in Monty

We are secretly recording cyclists through the city, then buying them beers and finding out how their day was -as a result, we are starting to understand their (invalid) reasoning better.

Here is Stokes Croft of a morning, the cyclist is waiting to turn right, and watching the two incoming lanes.



Note how two cars get their lane choice wrong and decide to go straight on in defiance of left-turn signs for that lane. Yet still some tax-dodger decides to RLJ their left turn onto Stokes Croft.

At 1:00, the cyclist gets their turn in, skids left onto picton street, passing a van on the pavement to their left. Some people think parking blocking the pavement is wrong, but in this part of the city it is that or block the road entirely. At 1:14 you see someone doing that, and you see the bicycle proceeding to the left of the van, despite the fact that in our post-mortem we can see the door opening, and the passenger forced to retreat by the passing bicycle.

We understand why you wouldn't wait for the van; in monty that could be a few hours waiting. But why not go up on the pavement, the way most tax-dodgers would do.

The answer to that becomes clear on a later video. You can be sure that a van isn't going to veer into the parked cars, but you can't be sure that they aren't going to swerve up onto the pavement and drive along for a bit. We see this hear on the "Richmond Road shared space", an area to the side of roads that would elsewhere be called by its old name, "the pavement"



The van graciously waits for the parent and pushchair blocking this pavement, and once gone gets up on it and carries on, before eventually parking. The cyclist then passes them, continues down to Bath Buildings and Cheltenham Road, where we can watch the chaos with bemusement. The first cyclist, the BMX-er dodging a turning car probably just ran orange, or was past on red but, well, slow. The second one, the one that nearly takes our our tax-dodger as they ride across the road, he has had 10 seconds of red before he goes. That's three cyclists and three vans in our camera. All three vans are trying to find somewhere safe to park, which anti-car montpelier makes excessively hard. Of the three cyclists in the video, two of them seem blatantly oblivious to red.

Monty week: cyclists endangering our paintwork

Our Monty week has gone on a bit, but that is because there are always shocking things to cover.

Last month, we were celebrating the loss of a bollard finally re-opened Picton Square to important people in their 4x4s, giving you somewhere in this narrow-laned part of the city to park where you could be confident that your mirrors and paintwork would be safe.

But look at how this selfish cyclist endangers the paintwork of the parked 4x4 P334OWP. By trying to scrape between the remaining bollard and the vehicle, her child wagon may brush against the vehicle and so cause damage. And would any cyclist -who is no doubt uninsured- stop and leave their contact details were this to happen? We doubt it!

Note also that we have evidence this helmet-less mother lets her children play in the street! We have informed Bristol Social Services.

Communication on Richmond Road

Some footage of one of our cyclists shouting at car drivers. Do we car drivers do this? Rarely. A quick beep of the horn, a friendly little note, that's all. Yet here, this tax dodger can be heard repeatedly shouting "Wait" at the vehicle pulling out, despite the fact that that vehicle has paid real money to use the road.

Yes, the vehicle pulled out without indicating or looking, but the fact is that indicators are for indicating intent to other cars. There are none in the area. Therefore they are not needed. We also note that if there had not been a group of tax-dodging pedestrians walking down the middle of the road, the van would not have been held up so long, and this near-miss would never have occurred. Yet again, if there had been a collision, who gets the blame? The bicycle, merely because of its right of way? Or the van that just pulled out without looking. That's right, the van, despite the fact that's the kind of thing that everyone does every day and nobody else on the road has any right to be there.

Undercover Montpelier

Again, we send our undercover cyclist and pedestrians into the city streets. Unlike in the Panorama documentary, we aren't going to make them do some in-mirror filming where they cry about the hard time they got -that's because we don't care about their feelings. Instead we just watch with bemusement.

Here, then, is an evening crossing of Montpelier. The bike is apparently equipped with LED head lamps, though this doesn't show up well in the video. Fairfield Road, a zigzag on Richmond Road then a descent on York Road -with oncoming traffic- followed by a drop down Brook Hill and along Upper Cheltenham Place to join York Road again.

What does show up is that there isn't much through traffic, and what there is gives way to the bicycle. It's hard to say that Bristol persecutes cyclists when every one of the approaching vehicles comes to a halt. The photographer claims that this is due to the fact that "My LED helmet lights cause physical pain to drivers I look at", which is something we aren't sure about, though it is certainly possible that they may be stopping because they can't actually tell that it is an oncoming bicycle. We would have to do some A/B testing with different lighting options to reach a conclusion. For now we shall just assume that in this city everyone is gracious to bicycles, even though they are clearly inappropriate for these narrow city streets.

Note how at the end of the ride, the cyclist has the rudeness to tell off a car for driving round without lights. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander we say, and if bicycles are going to nip round our streets without lights, not stopping at traffic lights or zebra crossings, then we car drivers should have the same privileges -and that includes the option of driving without lights. Its more environmentally friendly, you know.

However, that's not what we really want to cover. What we do want to raise is that Montpelier is simply too narrow for cars to get past bicycles, and that Picton Street-York Road-Fairfield Road route is not some residential road, it is the primary rat-run of Montpelier, cutting out two sets of utterly needless traffic lights and two mini roundabouts. If you want to get from Stokes Croft to Ashley Down hill, you are in a hurry and you know the back roads, this is the secret route to take. Yet all it takes is one single bicycle and there's suddenly a tail back of traffic, and all that time advantage is lost. The cars parked on either side of the road are as far over as they can be, and now with the police sending them threatening letters, it's going to be hard for them to provide any passthrough space for bicycles.

We should ban bicycles from those roads! This is a key through route in the city for well-informed locals, not some back route for bicycles. They should be forced to use Cobourg Road and Upper Cheltenham Place or Shaftesbury Avenue, not this, the main road through Montpelier. Especially during morning and evening rush hours. Banning bikes here would make it much easier to get a car over to St Werburgh's and then onto the Mina Road. Here's our proposal -red is the red-marked car route, green for the tax dodgers:

View Priority Routes Through Montpelier in a larger map

Those drivers trying to use this route are important revenue earners for the city -pootling cyclists aren't. And independent of whether or not this area gets 20 mph zones, oncoming bicycles delay cars here, and that costs all those people money. Ban them from the main streets in Montpelier -give them the back roads- and all will be well.

Monty Corner Work

"D" from Montpelier drops us a note pointing out this car on Richmond Avenue, a "classic" piece of parking

Apart from the way the wheels of the car R338KJT were not aligned, we couldn't see much wrong with it at first. But when we noticed. The letter box! By parking exactly where it has, nobody will be able to send a letter here.

Given there is clear demand for parking on this corner, the obvious solution would be to move the letter box.

Notice to readers: We do accept content from other than Montpelier and Kingsdown, it just happens to be so, well, easy to find amusing content there. Contributions from any part of the city to bristol.traffic at gmail.com, please.

Technically Correct

We love contributions, follow the instructions. We like funny ones the best. Hence a special mention to Montpelier correspondent KL, who sends in a lovely shot of a Herbert's Bakery van up on the pavement on Richmond Road.

It's actually been here a week, other people have seen it blocking the pavement, but this photo captures the scene best: a delivery van in a disabled slot.

Because it is appropriate. That shed to the right is the local garage. If the van is up by the garage for a week, rather than trying to get to Clifton in snow conditions, that is one seriously disabled vehicle.

Partially Disabled

Another car making partial use of a disabled slot, this time in Montpelier.

By parking up on the pavement, this volvo FRL121D still leaves room for a vehicle displaying a disabled sticker to park in the bay, they just double park a bit and stick out into the road. This is Richmond road; blocked to through car traffic to deny stolen cars a through route, and as a result, double parking would not seriously inconvenience anyway.

This is a innovative and practical technique which could radically expand the parking capacity of some Montpelier streets.

Montpelier: it does have pavements!

This could be some strange organised event, or maybe the photographer was passing through earlier than usual, but here is photographic evidence that under the parked cars, there is actually pavement in Montpelier

This is something that has rarely been seen, and must be treasured.

Question: if Montpelier became a CPZ, would the pavement be marked out as resident parking, or would the parking capacity of the area be cut by 50% by requiring cars to park on the road on one side of the street only? Next question. Would that make it safer for cyclists?

Colston School: parents not getting the message

Here we have some mothers pushing kids home from Colston's school, the one that has now forbidden bikes and scooters.

Clearly the purpose of the banning was to make it easier for the school run by car, yet here we see two families recklessly blocking Richmond Road to passing cars. How much more selfish can they get?

Traffic calming the bike route

That little bike crossing in Montpelier between Richmond Road and Picton Street is dangerous. Bikes heading onto Richmond Road pull out with no warning, and could run into anyone coming down the hill -including other bikes.

The people who care most about this danger appear to Montpelier's 4X4 users, who do their best to control bike speed by blocking the exit. Nobody else nearby cares -they are too selfish, choosing to park near their houses rather than park in a way that would reduce the risk of road accidents and make the district a safe place to walk and cycle -as this Mercedes, H19ODG, is doing.

Montpelier mixed-use area

Here's a lovely shot of evening Montpelier. Three kids cycling round the street; two adults pushing the bikes up the hill. Further down Richmond Road there are some more people walking in the middle of the street, carrying shopping bags. A taxi will nudge its way up the hill, but carefully, rather than the 35+mph that is their ideal speed.

This street effectively makes Montpelier Bristol 's first people-first-cars-second area. And to achieve this, the residents didn't need any contributions from Bristol City Council. Instead they came up with their own goal - a safe place to walk and play- and a simple strategy to achieve this.
What did they do? Well, if you look at the edges of the picture, you can see it. Along each side of the road, completely blocking every pavement, is a near-continuous line of cars. This forces pedestrians into the street, but the cars are positioned such that the road is too narrow to drive fast. If the parked cars were not here, through traffic would speed, and the children would be constrained to the pavement, rather than being able to enjoy the whole width of the street. And, as they are cycling, that would increase the risk of pedestrian/cycle collisions, which as we all know, is the greatest danger facing this city.
It is contributions to innovative road design like this that make Montpelier a leading part of "Cycling City Bristol"

Bike Lane? No, Parking space

Richmond Road in Montpelier was blocked off to cars over a decade ago, leaving a narrow gap for bicycles.

Or alternatively, leaving an extra space to park cars, here the mondeo P322VUY.

This is 7 O'Clock in the evening incidentally, there is room to park three cars in the street in front of the Passat and the little Nissan. This car doesnt need to waste time reverse parking though, not when there is a perfectly good space here for a car. And bikes? Who cares.